It looks like going free hasn't hurt Opera Software's ability to innovate. The company has just rolled out the first "technology preview" (we'll call it an alpha, even if they won't) of Opera 9.0, which includes a raft of new features, such as an improved popup blocker, a Firefox-like opera:config screen to access configuration choices, better support for emerging standards like AJAX, and better HTML rendering, including improved Acid2 rendering. The preview is available for Windows, Linux, Unix and Macs.